Coach Park Hang-seo and his worries

Let's look at the Korean coach's schedule in October. First, they will fly to the UAE to meet the Chinese team on October 7 and Oman on October 12. In the 2022 U23 Asian qualifiers, U23 Vietnam will meet U23 Chinese Taipei in the opening match on October 27. After that, U23 Vietnam will meet U23 Hong Kong (China) on October 29. In the final match, U23 Vietnam will meet U23 Myanmar on October 31.

Thus, within a month there are 24 days from October 7 to 31.Coach Park Hang-seowill be in charge of 5 matches, which is less than 5 days/match, including travel time, the density is quite stressful. This requires a training and travel schedule for the 2 teams to be precise and Coach Park Hang-seo must work hard to complete it.

Target toUzbekistan

In the 3rd qualifying round of the 2022 World Cup, the Vietnamese team's chances of going deep are not many, but we still have the goal of getting points when meeting China and Oman. Meanwhile, after 3 times participating in the U23 Asian Cup Finals in 2016, 2018 and 2020, Coach Park Hang-seo is certainly aiming for the 4th consecutive time to pass the U23 Asian qualifying round. Especially when U23 Vietnam is in the same group I with Myanmar, Hong Kong (China) and host Chinese Taipei in the U23 Asian qualifying round 2022, which are considered easy opponents.

Coach Park Hang-seo carefully instructed his students before the training session. Photo: Hai Hoang

The 2022 AFC U23 Championship qualifiers have a total of 43 teams, divided into 11 groups, competing in a round-robin format to calculate rankings in each group. The 11 first-placed teams and the 4 second-placed teams with the best results will qualify for the final round held in Uzbekistan from June 1 to June 19, 2022. The match schedule of U23 Vietnam is considered quite favorable when facing opponents of increasing level. The opportunity to top Group I of U23 Vietnam is not difficult, if Coach Park Hang-seo has free hands.

After Taiwan withdrew from hosting the tournament due to the complicated developments of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has just announced that Group I of the AFC U23 Championship Qualifiers will be held in Kyrgyzstan. For the convenience of Coach Park Hang-seo, U23 Vietnam will travel to the UAE where the Korean coach is currently directing the match against China, from October 8 and will have a friendly match with Kyrgyzstan. After that, the U23 Vietnam team will move to this Central Asian country to compete in Group I. Coach Park Hang-seo flew to Kyrgyzstan after the match against Oman and has less than 2 weeks before facing the Chinese Taipei U23 team.

Overcoming challenges

Of course, this is not the first time Coach Park Hang-seo has been in a difficult situation like this. He has two Korean "tiger generals" to help him effectively, namely assistant Lee Young-Jin at the Vietnam national team, and assistant Kim Han-Yoon in charge of implementing the training program at the Vietnam U22 team. These are all military leaders who have followed Mr. Park for many years and understand his intentions during the training process.

Coach Park Hang-seo received bad news about the injury situation in the Vietnam team. Photo: Hai Hoang

Mai Sy Hoang, Van Viet and the young Vietnamese players certainly face many difficulties when competing in a Central Asian country for the first time. Assistant Kim Han Yoon and his students have to get used to the extremely hot and harsh climate. But the hardest is still Coach Park Hang-seo who has to "carry a baby and grind rice" at the same time in the context of the Covid-19 epidemic like this.

I wish the U23 Vietnam players the right to enter the final round held in Uzbekistan from June 1 to June 19, 2022. This will create more motivation for coach Park Hang-seo to return to Vietnam to face Japan 11 days later in the third qualifying round of the 2022 World Cup.